Hilary Harris 1929-1999
Nine Variations on a Dance Theme (1966)
This prize-winning film captures dancer Bettie de Jong, a longtime member of the Paul Taylor Company, as she performs a single dance theme numerous times. Harris shot de Jong from a variety of different camera angles during twenty-five filming sessions over the course of a year, and then edited the sequences together as a montage, resulting in nine different variations on an identical series of movements. Like Maya Deren's 1945 dance film A Study in Choreography for Camera, Harris' film explores the possibilities opened up by dance on camera.